


a speaker for my dead

by dirgewithoutmusic



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005), Ender Series - Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game - All Media Types
Genre: A ramble of sorts, Gen, Wouldn't you?, he reads them and weeps for days, i am emotionally compromised, speaker for the dead is one of the most powerful concepts to me, the doctor finds the hive queen and hegemon, two broken boys so good at finding the worth in other people
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-30
Updated: 2014-06-30
Packaged: 2018-02-06 20:27:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1871322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dirgewithoutmusic/pseuds/dirgewithoutmusic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Answering the prompt: a conversation between Ender Wiggin and the Doctor.<br/>--</p><p>Any conversation between these two needs Jane the ansible and Sexy the TARDIS in the background, forming a support group for Extra-Dimensional and Temporally-Unstuck Beings Who Fall in Love with Repenting, Self-Destructive, Genius Children Whose Brilliance Only Gets them in Trouble.<br/>-<br/>Can you imagine the Doctor stumbling upon the Hive Queen though? He too is mourning a whole species. He is their son and he is their killer. The book would tremble in his hands.</p><p>Can you imagine him stumbling upon the Hegemon and seeing himself in Peter?</p><p>He would shake for days— Peter’s arrogance, his As God Am I righteousness, the benevolent dictator who saved the world, who erased Donna’s mind to save her life, who makes decisions for other people, who wins.</p><p>But the Speaker who wrote Peter Wiggin’s life story loved him. The author was honest, evenhanded, condemning as well as kind— but he loved Peter, this bully and this savior of Man. It is written into every line of the Hegemon, and for all it shakes the Doctor to see his selfsame rightoeus arrogances written out on the page, he puts down the book and he feels seen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a speaker for my dead

Any conversation between these two needs Jane the ansible and Sexy the TARDIS in the background, forming a support group for Extra-Dimensional and Temporally-Unstuck Beings Who Fall in Love with Repenting, Self-Destructive, Genius Children Whose Brilliance Only Gets them in Trouble.

—

Can you imagine the Doctor stumbling upon the Hive Queen though? He too is mourning a whole species. He is their son and he is their killer. The book would tremble in his hands.

Can you imagine him stumbling upon the Hegemon and seeing himself in Peter?

He would shake for days— Peter’s arrogance, his As God Am I righteousness, the benevolent dictator who saved the world, who erased Donna’s mind to save her life, who makes decisions for other people, who wins.

But the Speaker who wrote Peter Wiggin’s life story loved him. The author was honest, evenhanded, condemning as well as kind— but he loved Peter, this bully and this savior of Man. It is written into every line of the Hegemon, and for all it shakes the Doctor to see his selfsame rightoeus arrogances written out on the page, he puts down the book and he feels seen.

—

Maybe one of his companions brings it on board, a fledgling Speaker who is looking for new stories, new words, new imaginations.

She wants to speak for the dead, to tell their stories, and she’s so afraid that her one brain and one heart and one life will keep her from doing justice to all those myriad souls she means to speak for.

So the Doctor gives her a hundred lives.

They save worlds and meet strange new people. But in each of their adventures, she is the one who understands. She reaches out her hands to scaly, toothy, alien, fuzzy, gaseous strangers and she listens to their stories.

When she steps off the TARDIS for the last time and goes home (like Martha Jones, she has work to do), she has learned this: she will be an extraordinary speaker. But it will not be because she has lived more or seen more or grieved more or won more wars or earned more scars.

She knows how to listen. She loves. When she listens to the griefs and grievances of family, friends, and enemies, when she digs through the deceased’s old letters, articles, receipts, and vids, she will love them. When she speaks their story to the gathered mourners she will not hide their sins or glorify their victories.

She will tell their story with all the love and empathy she has always had in her, and people will weep in the aisles.

But before she leaves the Doctor, she will give him two books, small, worn. He will read the Hive Queen and he will weep for days. He will think of the reptile kind who lived below Earth and all the pain and strife they got because humans did not know how to live with people who looked so different from them.

And he will think of the Time Lords, of course, because he is both the weary Hive Queen who mourns her people but wishes her loving best to the human children she could not talk to, who she could not save from themselves; and he is also the man who killed them.

When he reads the Hegemon, he shakes for days. He knows that when he dies, there will be no one to tell his story, the good and bad of him, the joy, the exquisite foolishnesses, the blood on his hands, the people he has loved and lost along his way. There will be no one to stand up, with love, and say, “This was the Doctor.”

—

He thinks this, but he is wrong. The whole universe will rise to their feet. “This was the Doctor. He was destructive, impetuous, mad, a falling star and a lost child. He saved as many lives as he knew how (He saved mine, and mine, and mine, and mine—). He was ours.”

—

Ender’s last battle is a fixed point, more destructive and more timeline-changing than Pompeii ever was. The Doctor cannot save his own people but he wants so badly to save the Hive Queen’s. The Doctor slams into the barrier around the moment of the Xenocide for days before the TARDIS finally locks the controls and sends him to bed.

The Doctor rereads the Hive Queen. This time he feel less like the last of a species, a solemn, grieving spokesman, and more like the man who killed them. His hands itch for a third slender tome, not the Hive Queen or the Hegemon, but the Time Lords. Where is his people’s Speaker?

He reads the book, and it feels true. He had read it (the universe has read it, millennia later) so many times. It feels true, but how can a book speaking for a dead species be true? (unless they are not all dead) (unless there is one mourning son left to travel to stars) (or one mourning daughter)

He raps on the TARDIS console. “Can you take me to the Speaker? The first one. The one who wrote these. He knew the formics, he had to. Maybe there was one left. Maybe we could save them.”

When the TARDIS brakes sound finally fades, it is thousands of years after the Xenocide, on some backwater planet that speaks mostly Portuguese. “This isn’t right,” he tells the TARDIS, who beeps innocently at him. “I’m trying to find survivors, come on, you beautiful scrap heap, help me out here.”

She swings the doors open (the correct direction; maybe he will learn to push instead of pull one of these centuries).

The TARDIS always takes him where he needs to go.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted here: http://ink-splotch.tumblr.com/post/88612340509/if-youre-still-taking-prompts-can-i-suggest-a


End file.
